B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

How do I work out the meaning of a Greek text? How can I best understand the forms and vocabulary in this particular text?

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At first I thought nothing of this construction until I remembered that πλοῦτος is masculine and should have a masculine article, and I'm stuck trying to figure out what the neuter article's purpose and meaning is here.

I was wondering if Paul might have merely switched this article to the other side of κατὰ, where the article would be functioning like a relative pronoun (τὸ κατὰ πλοῦτος = "which is according to the richness...). But the previous clause has two parallel but distinct ideas that the article could be referring to, it doesn't make sense for the article to be referring to only one of the ideas, yet the article is singular. But as seems to often be the case with the neuter gender, could a singular neuter article (functioning as a relative pronoun) have a plural antecedent?

If the article isn't referring to a clause or train of thought, the only neuter antecedent I see is τοῦ αἵματος, but that seems like an odd antecedent giving the context to me.

Jesse Goulet wrote:I was wondering if Paul might have merely switched this article to the other side of κατὰ, where the article would be functioning like a relative pronoun (τὸ κατὰ πλοῦτος = "which is according to the richness...).

That solution doesn't work because πλοῦτος is the nominative form; it would have to be κατὰ πλοῦτον.

I'm wondering if there's a by-form of πλοῦτος which is a 3rd declension neuter (like γενος)?

A by-form is just an alternative form of a word. I've encountered the term a lot more frequently in the discussion of Hebrew than of Greek. I'm trying to think of an example in (much less inflectional) English; perhaps 'worked' and 'wrought' as alternative past tenses of 'work' would qualify, or 'forums' and 'fora' as plurals of 'forum'.

Why would Paul use a less common form? Probably impossible to answer. Generally, people who speak inflectional languages don't consciously choose which forms they use. It works pretty much on an intuitive level. Why does a Spanish speaker say "dije que me lo hiceras" instead of "dije que me lo hiceses" to communicate what we would say as "I told you to make it for me"? I doubt in many cases the speaker deliberately chooses one form over the other. It's not like Paul is sitting around thinking, "Should I use the masculine or the neuter variant of πλοῦτος?"

FWIW, regarding hiciera versus hicieses, I've heard the (ra) form of the preterite subjunctive used more in my area and that's what comes to my mind first. There does seem to be some difference between the two in that the (ra) form can substitute for the potential where the (se) form would not.

Scott Lawson wrote: FWIW, regarding hiciera versus hicieses, I've heard the (ra) form of the preterite subjunctive used more in my area and that's what comes to my mind first.

I agree, but I would add that the "hicieses," at least here in Colombia, sounds more elegant or erudite. I think that Spanish also illustrates the changes in gender with some words. For example, a computer here in Colombia is usually a masculine word (computador), whereas in most countries it's feminine (computadora). A Colombian more influenced by websites or people from other countries may use the feminine form because of his or her experience. This may be a conscience decision or simply as Scott says, "what comes to mind first." I would think that the same would be the case for πλοῦτος.

timothy_p_mcmahon wrote:A by-form is just an alternative form of a word. I've encountered the term a lot more frequently in the discussion of Hebrew than of Greek. I'm trying to think of an example in (much less inflectional) English; perhaps 'worked' and 'wrought' as alternative past tenses of 'work' would qualify, or 'forums' and 'fora' as plurals of 'forum'.

I'm not too sure "worked" / "wrought" are very good English examples because they actually have different semantic ranges, so a speaker/writer might choose one over the other to prevent ambiguity.